On excellent ship-modeling

Datum objave: Thursday, 27. October 2011 - 14:31

Making a faithful reconstruction of a historical ship is extremely hard work, in terms of craftsmanship and technical and artistic requirements. First of all, making a reconstruction of a historical ship requires extensive research. However, when it comes to our domestic (Croatian) shipbuilding heritage, these initial activities become even harder due to lack of resources.
The time of Croatian wooden sailing ships is long gone. Since the dusk of its great and long maritime tradition to the present, time has dispersed and faded the knowledge and memories about the old ships, and very little writings and documents have remained preserved. Even though this paradox has received its historical explanations, the lack of original shipbuilding drafts as bases for making credible models remains a very tangible problem for ship-modellers. Therefore, the search for historical sources (drafts, shipbuilding surveys, documents) often becomes a frustrating job because the needed data is fragmentary and rare. Gathering the data and images often turns into composing an archaeological artefact which is almost always missing a certain number of fragments that need to be reconstructed based on other (modern technical and shipbuilding) knowledge and other (mostly foreign) historical sources. In this sense, successful reconstructions of national historical ships should be especially appreciated. Namely, such work assumes long and painful search for technical data (which foreign authors have available even before they start modelling their historical ships). On the other hand, this endeavour has a cultural value because it rediscovers and preserves parts of national historical heritage. Besides appropriate technical and maritime knowledge, reconstructing a historical ship requires excellent craftsmanship and artistic inspiration in order to implement modellers’ knowledge into a model - a small version of an actual historical role-model.